


The Madness of Emperor Tarkin

by soulshrapnel



Series: oh my god they were co-emperors [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, BDSM, Emperor Tarkin, Emperor Vader, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Space Fascist Disaster Boys, an entire psychosexual train wreck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-15 05:21:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28558260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soulshrapnel/pseuds/soulshrapnel
Summary: Everything in Emperor Tarkin's life is falling apart. His children are Rebels and his reign is no longer under his control. His co-Emperor has done a heel-face turn in a way Tarkin doesn't fully understand, declaring that he wants to be called Anakin again and not Vader, and that maybe he doesn't want to rule by fear and violence, after all. The whole thing is ridiculous and unacceptable and if there was any way for Tarkin to stop it, he would.So... how come it's also kinda hot?(This is anoptional installmentin the co-emperors series; it's where I'm putting the weird sex stuff. If you're not into that, you can skip it and the other installments of the series will still make sense.)
Relationships: Wilhuff Tarkin/Darth Vader
Series: oh my god they were co-emperors [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1845532
Comments: 40
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanna reiterate what I said in the summary about this story being optional! I'm already working on #4 in this series, which will be T-rated and Luke-centric, and I'm kinda planning to go back and forth and write both stories concurrently, like a pair of interconnected Disney+ series. It is 1000% okay if you only want to read #4 and not this one, and #4 will be written with that kind of reader in mind.
> 
> Meanwhile, I've Chosen Not To Warn in this one for pretty much the same reason as in "Playing With Fire." Nobody's dying, getting raped, or having underage sex here, but you can expect a lot of questionable edgeplay and characters being emotionally dysfunctional in ways that make consent a little complicated. The BDSM I portray in my writing is not always best practice, shall we say.
> 
> On that note, if you are interested in this story but _haven't_ read "Playing With Fire" yet, I recommend going back and reading that first; it'll give you a lot of necessary context about what these characters' usual kink dynamic is, what problems they've had with it in the past, and how they're diverging from it now. Up to you, though. I'm not your fandom boss.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Five orders that Anakin will follow in the bedroom, and one that he won't.

Emperor Wilhuff Tarkin, who no longer felt like the emperor of anything, sat in the dark in his private office.

He had the afternoon and evening off. Or - since there was no higher authority to officially _grant_ Tarkin evenings off - it had been strongly suggested to him by his chief of staff that he cancel his obligations. For once, Tarkin hadn't been able to come up with a counter-argument.

Tarkin was coming apart at the seams, and it was Anakin's fault.

He hadn't been able to relax enough to sleep, and the idea of doing something for fun at a time like this - watching a cheap holovid, playing a strategy game against the computer, listening to some classical music as if nothing was wrong - seemed abhorrent somehow. Instead, he found himself firing up the strategic display at his work desk.

This was an office in the heart of the Imperial Suite, private to only the two Emperors and their personal guests. It was spacious, full of clean modernist lines in a nice, uniform gray. The strategic display stretched from the desk's surface all the way to the ceiling. Maps and charts could be projected up as the background on that screen while the user added their own annotations. Tarkin cleared the default starmap of the galaxy away and instead brought up a blank, dark gray background.

Into the center of the screen, he dragged two small icons: official Imperial portraits of himself and his co-Emperor.

Tarkin scowled briefly at himself - bony, gaunt and old, he didn't know what Anakin saw in him - but his attention went quickly to Anakin. He had only declared just this afternoon that he wanted to be called Anakin now and not Vader. He still looked the same as before - the true face invisible behind that black flared skull of a mask. Were he in the room now at Tarkin's side, his breath would have made its usual rhythmic sound. Nothing had changed but the name, and Tarkin already remembered calling Anakin by that name, long ago.

It shouldn't have felt like a threat.

He added more images.

The Rebel Alliance intarsia. He put that at the top right corner of the screen. Anakin had demanded that they draw up a truce with the Rebels. Such actions were, in Tarkin's opinion, suicide - they would weaken the Empire in a way that led directly to its end. But he hadn't been able to talk Anakin out of it.

Another image: Prince Luke, Anakin's long-lost son, who had only recently arrived in the palace and upended everything. Tarkin put him to the side, between the two Emperors and the Rebels' symbol.

Another: Grand Admiral Natasi Daala, Tarkin's other lover besides Anakin. He moved her image to the bottom right. He had sent her away earlier today: partly for her safety, and partly for another, secret reason. If the Empire did fall, even if Tarkin himself was compromised, Natasi would be strong and clever enough to put the pieces back together. She was now far away, in a location she had not disclosed, beginning the years-long process of preparing for that role. Tarkin wasn't sure if they would ever see each other again, and that hurt him just as much as the rest of all this.

To the bottom left, he put a picture of the late Emperor Palpatine, but then he frowned at it and deleted it again. Palpatine was the one who'd designed this Empire and put it in place, but he'd mostly done it by lying to everyone, including Tarkin and Anakin. Tarkin was actually rather angry about that, but it didn't matter. Palpatine wasn't _here_ anymore, so Palpatine was irrelevant.

To the right side, close to the rest of the Rebels, Tarkin placed his own children, Garoche and Rivoche. They were gone, too. They'd betrayed him.

This wasn't helping. The proper use of this software was to pair it with expansive network and database searches, to make new connections and expand his thinking by seeing where new possible elements fit. Tarkin had nothing to add to it now that he didn't already know.

He blanked out the rest of the display and zoomed in on Anakin's masked face.

Anakin had never been a safe person, but Tarkin had believed that, when approached with intelligence and some modicum of respect, he could be _handled._ He had trusted Anakin with his life on missions, and his body in private, because he thought that he understood the limits of that power, what it would and wouldn't do. That belief had been proven false today. With Palpatine gone and with Luke in the mix, Anakin was on a trajectory Tarkin didn't understand at all.

He stared at the picture of Anakin and swallowed hard.

It was madness, perhaps, but Tarkin still wanted him.

Tarkin had _always_ gotten off on the danger of being with Anakin. And what better danger was there than this? The very Empire was at stake. His life was at stake. There was no way to retreat, even if Tarkin had been the kind of coward who wanted to. And his usual methods of victory had been removed.

That made it a challenge.

Tarkin liked a challenge.

Didn't he?

*

At least Anakin still came when Tarkin called. He had told Tarkin today, in an attempt to calm him, that he would follow orders. He would stay if ordered; he would go if ordered. He would not take back the damned truce, but in these small matters he was Tarkin's to command. So when Tarkin commed an aide and said, _inform Emperor Vader that he is expected in the Imperial Suite,_ Anakin went to him promptly.

They stared at each other. Tarkin sat perched on the edge of his broad gray canopy bed, still wearing his Imperial robes. Anakin stood across from him, big and mechanical, indicator lights blinking on the panel in his chest, ventilator rasping, hands at his belt, mask unreadable.

This felt almost like bringing a stranger to his bed. Tarkin had thought he knew Anakin so well; Anakin had insisted, this afternoon, that he still knew him. But he wasn't sure enough of himself to make predictions anymore. In an intimate context, would this version of Anakin treat him the same as before? Would he be as hungry for affection, as needy, as impatient, as cruel?

Best get on with it, either way.

Tarkin took a breath. "You're still taking my orders, then?"

"If you wish." There was something in that deep voice that Tarkin couldn't classify - stony or annoyed or amused. Anakin wasn't normally submissive in bed, but he _had_ offered.

Tarkin looked straight at Anakin, willing himself not to falter. "Then I order you to tell me the truth.  Do you still want me? After everything that happened today?"

"Of course I do. I thought I made that clear."

"And do you have the same kink preferences as before? Or are Anakin's tastes in that area different from Vader's?"

Anakin stalked a few steps toward him. This, at least, was familiar - the way Anakin threw his weight around. The way he was so easily riled. "I want from you what I have always wanted, my toy."

Tarkin raised his eyebrows. "Is that so? I thought perhaps the Rebels would have convinced you that a virtuous Emperor should treat his lovers gently-"

"That is none of the Rebels' business," Anakin growled. He sounded surprised and dismayed, as if it have never occurred to him that kink and morality could be connected in that way. A fringe benefit of Anakin having discovered kink while he was a Sith Lord, Tarkin supposed. He'd been so depraved already, he hadn't had to go through the phase of feeling guilty about it.

"Prove it." Tarkin gestured to himself. "Strip me."

Anakin did not have to be told twice. Tarkin let out a sharp breath as the Force pushed him backwards, supine, an inch above the bedspread. The silky gray Imperial robes came off in all of their foolish layers. Anakin left them crumpled in a pile on the floor. Normally Tarkin would have objected to that sort of mess, but tonight it somehow felt right. The Empire was a sham anyway; they could let all of it fall away from them.

"Put your senses in me," said Tarkin.

He felt the Force sensation he was accustomed to, a light pressure that traveled and explored every inch of his body. Anakin had some difficulty with sex due to his injuries, but he had compensated by developing techniques like these, letting him give all sorts of varied sensations to his partners while he mentally shared their senses and their pleasure. This was the beginning of that process, as he reminded himself what it felt like to be in Tarkin's skin, to feel with Tarkin's nerve endings instead of his own.

There was always an extra sweetness to being intimate again after a fight. They'd both said they still wanted each other, but it was one thing to say that and another thing to act it out with their bodies. Tarkin's nerves lit up even more brightly than normal as Anakin pawed over him, the Force-touch sliding down his torso and between his thighs. There was _everything_ wrong with this, but he still wanted it so much.

"You pretend you do not like what occurred today," Anakin murmured. "But you want me all the more."

"It's my failing. I want you even when you're a dangerous disaster." Tarkin tried to make some sharp gesture, but of course the Force held his limbs where they were. He liked that. "Now, hit me."

"Where shall I hit you?" said Anakin, some of that earlier irony winding back into his tone. Tarkin was a little surprised he'd gone with these orders at all; it wasn't how they usually went about kink. But he liked it, and he wasn't going to question much. It felt good, reasserting this kind of control.

"Slap my face," Tarkin decided. "And then flip me over and do something creative. Burn me."

A stinging blast of Force momentum hit him in the face, drawing a grunt of pain from him as his head snapped to the side. Tarkin gasped out a breath, and before he could recover, Anakin picked him up with the Force and threw him down into a new position. He was flush with the bed now, landing roughly on his belly on the gray bedspread, and his legs stretched out behind him. The first tentative tendrils of an uncomfortable heat licked over his shoulders, his calves, twining slowly towards each other.

Tarkin had often been told that he wasn't a real submissive - he didn't _defer_ to his partners - but he did like to be hurt in quite a number of ways. Burning was more intense than some of the other things he liked, but Tarkin craved intensity now. That was what he'd always kept coming back to Anakin for, the sheer range and strength of things Anakin could do to a partner without harming them.

Anakin had burned on the shores of Mustafar, all those years ago, when he transformed into Darth Vader. Now he was transforming again, and Tarkin was being dragged down with him. A little flame seemed fitting.

He closed his eyes, breathing deep through the pain as it slowly intensified. This was good, but not good enough. He wanted both more pain and more control. He wanted to prove to himself that he'd mastered this.

"Harder," he snapped. "And speak to me. I need that, remember?"

"I remember," Anakin rumbled.

In a single moment, the burning sensation doubled in intensity, biting in under his skin as it spread. Tarkin groaned slightly, pleased with himself. This felt right in a way that was different from normal. He felt - the word _punished_ occurred to him, but he didn't know why; it was an absurd word. Tarkin wasn't the one who had something to apologize for.

"You think you know what you want," Anakin continued. "But your judgment has been proven faulty. Isn't that so, Emperor? Perhaps I will teach you your place."

Tarkin's cock twitched against the bedspread, even as a small warning bell sounded somewhere in his head. He did know his place; that had been made clear enough today. No matter how much of the actual work of ruling he did, he was Emperor only at Anakin's pleasure. Anakin was his public claim to legitimacy, and Anakin was stronger than him, which was why he'd been able to make Tarkin back down about the Rebels and the truce. His methods of keeping Anakin's destructive urges in check would only work when Anakin wanted them to. If Tarkin wanted to manage the rest of his existence at all productively, he had to accept that.

And that felt good, for some Force-forsaken reason, in the midst of the pain. Forbidden and good. Wasn't it just a larger version of what they always liked to do?

"Yes," he said, surprising himself. "What's my place, Anakin?"

The mattress depressed as Anakin leaned on to it. His shadow fell over Tarkin's body as the pain ramped up again, blazing up and down Tarkin's skin in a way that he couldn't help but make noises about, small ones low in his throat. "Your place is beneath me, enduring what I do to you. Giving me pleasure. _Trusting_ me."

Tarkin took another shaky breath. Often, when Anakin used a line like this, Tarkin would jab back. He would insist there was no reason to trust him.

But he was distracted now from that kind of banter. It was hard enough just to keep his breath steady. The illusory flames had crept all the way down his body, twisting over his spine and his sides, searing whatever they touched. He tried to take deep, slow breaths, the kinds that would help him endure this, but the pain was too much for that. He could only pant shallowly, frightened and aroused.

And that gave him an awful idea.

He shouldn't, he supposed. But today had already become unmoored from everyone's idea of _should._ It was his turn to give the orders now, and in a wild and strange and dangerous way, he wanted it.

"Choke me," he whispered.

Anakin paused. "What?"

They'd never done this before. Tarkin was the one who'd forbidden it, the very first time they decided to have sex. Anakin was famous for strangling his own officers at the slightest provocation, which was precisely why Tarkin had declared it a hard limit. Masochist or not, he didn't want to spend his sexual encounters wondering if he was actually about to die.

But he was going to wonder that anyway, from now on, so they may as well enjoy it.

"Choke me," Tarkin ordered briskly, some steadiness returning to his voice. "Go on. Are you taking orders tonight or aren't you?"

Anakin took a step back. The feel of the Force - the pressure holding Tarkin down, the heat tormenting him - evaporated.

"You forbade that," he said in an impatient tone. "It is the first limit you ever stated. Even before you told me not to injure you. Did you forget?"

"I'm allowed to change my limits," Tarkin snarled, pushing himself back up to sit on the bed, "just the same way you can change everything about yourself on a moment's notice-"

"Not in the _middle of a scene,_ " Anakin countered. " _You_ taught me better than that."

At the back of his mind, Tarkin knew this was true. It was a standard kink safety rule, and he'd had to lecture Anakin about it before. With a great deal of struggle and difficulty, he'd taught Anakin all sorts of rules. Even when only a single partner bore the risk, both of them had to consent to it, beforehand, when their minds were clear.

He knew that, but the endorphins of pain were singing in his veins, and everything was topsy-turvy today anyway, and he was too angry to care.

Anakin looked him up and down through that inscrutable mask, as if examining his mind. "This was a mistake. Your mind is still addled. We should not have played at all tonight."

"But-" This was the worst possible outcome. It was one thing to lose control of Anakin - it was another thing to lose Anakin's interest in him, too. He'd have no leverage left at all without that. "You're one to talk about minds being addled-"

"I cannot do this now." There was something genuinely shaky in Anakin's deep voice. He turned on his heel, and his black cape fluttered behind him. "You need time to come to your senses, as do I. We will speak again in the morning."

It was one of Anakin's least attractive habits, pushing Tarkin away when something distressed him too much. He had remembered to state aloud that it was temporary - that made it better than some of the other times. But it still wasn't good enough. They should talk this out. If they were going to argue, they should _argue._

"Get back here, Anakin," Tarkin snarled, drawing himself fully upright.

But Anakin strode through the door, and it hissed decisively shut behind him. Leaving Tarkin, in the sumptuous gray of his Imperial bed, naked and alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe Tarkin wants to be prey, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings: um... vore? in a dream sequence? that, uh, happens. also animal harm/death, Graphic Depictions of Violence, extremely questionable Eriaduan childrearing practices, i don't know what the fuck is wrong with me, please do mind the E rating, this is NOT a fic for minors.

Tarkin didn't think he was going to be able to sleep, not even amid all the luxuries of the Imperial Suite, not with all the tea and mental discipline in the world. He was too wound up to do much but lie miserably on his pillows, facedown. He and Anakin would talk in the morning, perhaps, but he didn't anticipate that going any better than tonight had. He tried not to think about how the Empire was falling apart and there was nothing he could do. He tried not to think about Natasi. He tried not to think about his children.

He must have eventually fallen asleep after all, though, because he dreamed.

Tarkin was on the Carrion Plateau - the broad stretch of wild land that belonged to his family, where every Tarkin boy spent his summers until he proved himself worthy or died. Green was everywhere, leaves the size of serving platters and gnarled brown trunks too large to put his arms around. He was lying on his back in the leaf litter. The air was humid and fragrant. Insects and birds made a background cacaphony, in which so many signs necessary for survival could be read, once one learned the language. The sudden flutter, for instance, that meant a predator was nearby.

Anakin crouched over him, somehow even bigger and more monstrous than ever, his loud breath blending in to the rest of the natural evening chorus, just one more creature's call among many.

Tarkin had the feeling he'd been fighting for a long time. He couldn't get up; he couldn't seem to move. One of his legs jutted out at an unnatural angle - broken, he thought, though he felt no pain there. His stomach did hurt. His fingertips hurt, but there was no blood under his nails, only a strange black dirt, and that bothered him. If he'd been fighting, there ought to be blood. He _smelled_ blood, even though it wasn't on his hands.

But Anakin, in that armor of his, was not a thing that bled.

Tarkin raised a hand to push him away, but his arm moved only slowly, as if through honey instead of air. By the time it met Anakin's angular mask, all the aggression had been drained from the gesture. He ran his fingertips down the mask's side as tenderly as if he were touching Anakin's bare face.

"You hunted me once," said Anakin. "Do you remember?"

"Of course I remember." There was something wrong with the way Tarkin's voice came out. As if he couldn't draw breath enough to muster up any severity, any anger.

He reached further up, and Anakin caught his hand. Those gloves of Anakin's were so big, and their claws were so sharp - how had he never realized Anakin had claws before? They pierced him, and it hurt, but it felt strangely good - as if, deep under his skin, there had been something lonely, something that needed to be touched this way.

"This is only fair," said Anakin.

He brought his other hand lightly to Tarkin's stomach, and that hurt even more. Tarkin looked down at himself, and it belatedly made sense why he hurt so much. There was a red gash all the way across his abdomen, deep and foul, the kind of wound creatures didn't get up from again. It had been there since the dream began.

The effect was oddly muted. Even his sight of his own wounds was blurred. Tarkin had seen men and animals cut open like this before, their viscera spilling onto the ground. He saw very little of that gore and filth when he looked at himself. Only the slick dark red of blood and the sense of the inevitable. Even the smell was only blood and earth, not any of the worse smells of this kind of violent death, not yet.

"You know I need this now," said Anakin, his deep voice softer than Tarkin had ever heard it before. "May I? My love?"

Tarkin ought to tell him no. A true Tarkin man would fight to the end, even knowing it was hopeless. If a creature took him down like this, he ought fight all the more viciously with his last few breaths. He ought to take it down with him.

But he was so tired, and he had been fighting so hard for so long. Longer than he could remember. Tarkin's very bones were made of fighting, and he wanted to put them down.

He wanted to rest.

Anakin leaned in impatiently, and Tarkin knew that, eventually, he would take what he needed - with Tarkin's permission or not. He couldn't hold that against him, really; it was the way of all predatory creatures, driven by hunger and need. Tarkin had been a creature like that himself, in his way. He'd always understood what Anakin was.

And there was something still so beautiful in that dark form, something he wanted so badly that it felt like another kind of pain.

"Yes," he whispered, laying his head back.

This had to happen eventually. Tarkin was only glad it was Anakin, and not some meaningless random accident, some stranger, someone he hated more.

He felt his gaze blur a little further, his eyes becoming glassy. He watched as Anakin's mask opened up into a pair of impossible black jaws, steaming as he breathed that loud breath of his, fanged with teeth like obsidian.

Tarkin wanted those teeth inside him, crushing his bones and drinking the marrow, feared them and craved them in equal measure. He wanted to learn what it felt like. Anakin was both monster and man, all deadly beauty and all hunger, and he should have expected no one could keep that hunger in check forever, not even with love.

He watched, fascinated and detached, as the monster bent and ate its fill.

*

He woke with a jolt in his bed, panting. It was quiet and dark, and the gray sheets were twisted around him as if he'd been thrashing. He wasn't on the Carrion; he wasn't dying. Anakin wasn't feasting on his entrails like some common beast, and Anakin's helmet _certainly_ had never been shaped like that. It was a dream. Just a metaphor, maybe. He was afraid Anakin's foolish actions were going to kill him, so he dreamed of Anakin killing him; that was all it was.

But it had felt awful and forbidden and thrilling in the way that all the best kink did. His heart was pounding and he was terribly hard, and he had already unthinkingly reached between his legs before he blinked awake enough to realize what he was doing. Then he pulled his hand away as fast as if he'd been about to touch a stove. He sat upright, tangling the sheets even further, catching his breath.

He didn't want to be Anakin's prey. That was precisely the opposite of what Tarkin wanted. He had lost control, and he wanted it _back,_ not... not whatever else this was.

He _could not_ be prey. That was the whole point of all of this.

A memory came to him, unbidden: when he was eleven years old, on his first visit to the Carrion Plateau, his Grand-Uncle Jova had taken him up to a hunting stand, where he could watch the wild creatures go about doing the things wild creatures did. He had stayed up there all day, curious and afraid of the newness of all this and determined to do it correctly. In the afternoon, a pack of wild dogs had brought down a deer just under his perch, and he had watched the whole process in fascination. It was the first time he had ever seen an animal kill another animal. He had killed and butchered creatures already, under careful supervision, but he had not yet observed the chase.

Wilhuff - he was really only Wilhuff at that point; he'd been born to the Tarkin name, but had not yet earned the right to bear it - watched the deer in particular. It employed evasion strategies that seemed logical to his young gaze, zigzagging this way and that, using the trees as obstacles for its pursuers, but it was tired. It had superficial wounds already from where the dogs had snapped at it, where they'd scored errant blows with their claws, and it was beginning to stumble. Dogs, like humans, were endurance predators, and they could run for longer than their prey.

It seemed to Wilhuff, observing this, that the deer's defeat consisted of several moments, not just a single one. There was the moment it died, of course, the body going limp and the blood slowing as the heart stopped. Before that, there was the moment it was mortally wounded, the moment its body broke deeply enough that all further life became an afterthought. And before that, there was a third moment, genuinely puzzling to his young mind; the moment when the deer fell, not directly from any of its wounds but from pain and exhaustion. The moment when it simply stumbled and came to a halt on the ground - eyes wide, limbs twitching - and did not make any real attempt to get up again.

 _Why did it stop running?_ he asked Jova, later, after Jova and his Rodian friends had chased off the dogs and stolen the kill. There was good meat to be had on a deer, and the smell of venison rose rich and tempting above their campfire. Wilhuff had been puzzling over this the whole time. He thought he understood how it felt to be tired, but he could not imagine being so tired and hurt that he couldn't get up again in an emergency, not if he knew for sure that his life depended on it.

 _It's prey,_ Jova said gruffly, turning the deer's body on its makeshift spit. _It knows what it's for._

Wilhuff tried to imagine what it would feel like for the deer to know that.

 _When it stops running,_ he asked, _does it stop being afraid?_

Jova snorted. _Of course not._

Jova's tone was sufficiently contemptuous that it made Wilhuff want to stop asking questions. It was sentimentality, he supposed. Weakness, that some part of him wanted the deer to be happy. There was no room for that sort of wishful thinking in the jungle. He resolved not to think about it anymore.

Years later, when he was old enough to think coherently about sex, Tarkin did occasionally catch himself remembering that deer. Sometimes, when he played dominant, there was a certain kind of mental state that he wanted to induce in his partners. A kind of wild, self-annihilating surrender. He didn't seriously entertain the notion that this was how it felt to be a deer. But it might have been the reverse, perhaps. It might have been the thing his young self imagined the deer feeling, the thing he wished it would feel.

He had never wished to feel it for himself. In fact, he wished not to. But he couldn't get it out of his head now. Anakin was going to destroy everything Tarkin had ever stood for, and in the end, it might be just as horrifyingly simple as in his dream. To stop fighting. To stop running, even though he hadn't stopped being afraid.

Tarkin pulled the sheets in more tightly around himself. The chrono at his bedside table said that it was still very early in the morning. It was too early to get up, and he had an irrational feeling that getting out of bed would expose him somehow; it would make him bait for the sort of predator that had never existed on Coruscant in the first place.

Such feelings were childish. He was better than this.

But he knew he wasn't getting back to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Anakin is _not_ happy with the direction that Tarkin's new fantasies are going in.

Anakin woke suddenly in his meditation chamber, startled by something, though he could not identify it at first. He had slept fitfully, too wrung out to relax, and now he reflexively cast out with his mind. Luke was peacefully asleep. The rest of the palace was going about its usual, muted, nighttime business. Tarkin, though...

Tarkin was awake, and his mind was a tangle of things Anakin neither liked nor understood.

He had hoped that Tarkin's strange mood would go away once he'd rested. Anakin had made them draw up a truce with the Rebels, and Tarkin had reacted to that like a threat to his life. He thought Anakin was forcing him to do a thing that would eventually kill them all. But it _wasn't_ going to kill them, and Tarkin's explanations for why he thought it was didn't make any sense. He was just rattled, Anakin had hoped. He needed time to adjust, and then he'd get better.

He wasn't getting better, though.

Anakin could feel that even from several rooms away. Tarkin's thoughts were fixed on him to a maniacal degree. Not only was the fatalistic fear was still there, but it was mixed with something else now - as it had been, briefly, last night, when Tarkin asked Anakin to choke him. A strange, self-destructive desire. Overnight, it had only intensified.

Anakin clenched his metal fists, pushing himself upright. This wasn't acceptable. And if it wasn't going away on its own, they would have to deal with it another way.

*

The sun had not yet risen; it was morning only in the most technical sense. Anakin didn't bother turning any lights on. His mask's lenses automatically adjusted to the dark, and it wasn't so dark anyway; there were always small, hidden lights in the Imperial Palace's corridors so that people could find their way.

The Imperial Suite's parlor had a long window looking out at the night sky, which was a smoggy, light-polluted indigo. But the bedroom was as dark as the moonlit desert. As the bedroom door slid shut behind Anakin, the light diminished to a level where an ordinary human wouldn't have seen much. Only his suit's indicator panels gave any illumination - them, and the small chrono on Tarkin's bedside table.

Tarkin was awake and sitting upright, with his sheets pulled in as if they could protect him. Anakin hadn't remembered to announce his arrival in advance, and Tarkin's eyes widened like a wary animal's as he entered. There was longing in that gaze, but Anakin couldn't tell if it was really for him, or for some distorted fever-dream version of himself.

Anakin had always liked the way Tarkin looked, the narrowness and wiry strength, and it was in Anakin's nature to respond to a partner's desire. Even - _especially_ \- if that desire was mixed with fear. But there were different kinds of fear, and this wasn't a kind he liked.

"You said we wouldn't speak again until morning," said Tarkin.

"It is technically morning." Anakin sat down on the edge of the bed, keeping a careful distance. "And your feelings were... loud."

Tarkin pulled his knees a little closer to his chest, embarrassed. "You could _feel_ all that?"

"Not its details. Its essence."

"Ah." Tarkin looked away. Whatever this strange mood was that had come over him, he didn't seem to like it any more than Anakin did. "What does that mean? What's the _essence_ of a thing like this?"

"You are afraid of me. You still fear the things you feared last night - that I will destroy you, or the Empire, or both. But that fear is mixed with something else. It is as though you have decided that fearing me that way is pleasurable. That you want it to happen. That is what I feel when I look at you."

Tarkin gave him the kind of nervous, shamed look that told Anakin he'd said it correctly. In the dark, his gaze went only vaguely in the direction of Anakin's face. "Do _you_ want it?"

"No."

"Why not, I wonder? Normally you like when people fear you."

"I like when you want me despite your fear." Anakin tilted Tarkin's chin up gently with a fingertip, helping him look at him a little more accurately. "But I do _not_ wish to harm you. I already explained to you that it is not my intent. You are not listening to me." And if they had that argument over again, it would have the same result. Tarkin still wasn't in a state to actually hear him out. "I have... set something off. Put you into a state where you cannot believe me."

"It's not a question of my mental _state,_ Anakin. It's facts. You broke my Doctrine. You broke my reign. You broke the unwritten rules on which this entire Empire functions, and you did it despite the rule I thought we'd agreed to, the one where you aren't authorized to set policy or give military orders until your mental health improves. You proved to everyone in that room, and everyone I had to involve in the truce subsequently, that it doesn't matter what rules anyone sets for you. When you want something badly enough, you'll have it, no matter whom it harms and what promises it breaks. Like a hungry veermok raging through a greeb's nest."

"You know why I did that," Anakin protested. He didn't like when Tarkin talked about him this way. "You were about to kill our children. If I am a beast, I am not the kind you say, wanting destruction for its own sake. I am the kind that protects its cubs."

"You and I both know how dangerous _that_ kind is. It doesn't change what I said."

Anakin shifted his weight, frustrated. The difference between the two kinds of beasts seemed obvious and important to him: it was about whether the destruction was motivated by a reasonable goal or not. Anakin had hurt people far worse than he'd hurt anyone yesterday, for reasons much less reasonable than yesterday's, and Tarkin had never complained like this before. But maybe the only thing Tarkin cared about, when it came to Anakin and brutality, was whether or not it affected Tarkin himself.

"What would you have me do?" said Anakin. "There is so little in the galaxy that I care for in this way. You cannot ask me to... stop caring."

Tarkin groped for his hand and, after a moment, took it. "I don't think that's what I'm trying to ask. I think what you see in my mind is... the opposite. I can't agree with your motives and you can't change them. But I don't have to agree with you to give in to you; we proved that yesterday. Why not just - let me give in?" He swallowed, hard and visibly; his hand was trembling in Anakin's grip, and it occurred to Anakin, in a way that it rarely did, how _old_ Tarkin was. "I always loved thinking to myself that you were under my thumb, that for all your power you couldn't destroy me even if you wanted to. But it wasn't true, was it? It never was. So - I'm here. Have your way with me. Destroy me, destroy the whole Empire if you have to, just - just get it over with. That's what I want."

It was, in a sense. Anakin could feel it. Tarkin hadn't only decided that Anakin would kill him. He wanted to be killed - not the way Anakin had wanted death, on his worst days, but with something more like a masochist's craving for pain. And his own desire frightened him every bit as much as Anakin did.

It frightened Anakin more.

"It is not what _I_ want," Anakin said, pulling his hand away. "You of all people should know that."

Tarkin's head turned slightly, trying to pinpoint again where Vader's face was in the darkness. "Should I?"

"I told you about Padmé." Maybe he was overreacting; maybe this was no worse than any other risky kink. But the more he put words to this, the more sure he was. "I know what it is to cause a loved one's death. If you think I ever wish to do _that_ again, then you never knew me. You are looking at me and seeing - something else. A phantom."

"Then make me stop." Tarkin's hand made a fist in the sheets. "I can't control this, Anakin. I didn't ask to feel this way. Go into my mind or whatever it is that you do and _make it stop._ "

Anakin gave Tarkin a long, uneasy look.

He could not, in fact, go into someone's mind and make them stop wanting something. There was a lot else that he could do. He could perform a mind probe and tear into a person's memories, rummaging through them like a junk drawer until he found what he wanted. He could perform a mind trick and suggest simple actions, though Tarkin's mind was fairly resistant. He could use his attentiveness to emotions, and his flair for drama, to induce fear. Or he could induce other things, in the right context. On one occasion, when their lives depended on it, he had used a mind probe to temporarily alter the structure of Tarkin's mind - making him feel reverence, which was not otherwise within Tarkin's repertoire.

But _removing_ an emotion? Anakin wasn't sure that was possible. Passion was sacred to the Sith. It could be harnessed, corrupted and to some degree changed, but _removing_ it was absurd. He wouldn't know where to begin.

He could find something else to do about it, though. He could study it. Tarkin had a need - a lust to sate, perhaps, or a fear to soothe - and these fantasies of Anakin killing him were a misguided way to meet that need. If they found its root, they could sate it or soothe it another way. It might even be something simple. This might still be little more than a night terror, a strange momentary urge blown out of proportion by sexual frustration and stress. They should try to solve it first as though it was simple. If it proved not to be, they could look more closely after that.

"I will find a way," he promised, impulsively. "To make it stop. To fix you."

Tarkin stared at him for a moment, and then he bent over and started to laugh.

"It is not funny," said Anakin, dismayed.

"I asked a Sith temple, once. How I could fix you."

Anakin didn't know what to do. He didn't see how this was relevant. He defaulted to putting a gloved hand on Tarkin's back, between his shoulders. He meant it to be reassuring, but he felt how Tarkin quivered at his touch. Less like a lover comforting him and more like a predator's breath at his neck. "What did it say?"

"That I couldn't, I suppose. Or rather - in lieu of a direct answer, it showed me a long list of ways you'd been hurt. They flashed by so quickly, I didn't fully understand them all. But I was in that vision, too. I was one of the things hurting you. The Dark Side either didn't think that could change, or didn't want it to, or it wanted me to figure out how to change it on my own." He looked up at Anakin, solemn now, all of the laughter gone. "I'm still doing it, aren't I? Both of us. No matter what we do, we're both hurting each other."

"No," said Anakin, more disturbed than ever. Tarkin seemed to find this idea tragic and thrilling, but Anakin could not let it be true. "You did not hurt me. You loved me when I was not worthy of love. You gave me the strength to break free of my master. You scolded me into living when I wanted to die. You let me bring my son here. Why do you think you have hurt me?"

"I - don't know." Tarkin's expression drew inward. "I've enabled you, I suppose."

"Enabled me at what?"

"Your delusions about that ghost, for one thing. I've given you Imperial responsibilities that you were in no way emotionally mature enough to handle. I pushed you to force yourself to deal with them, without any real oversight-"

"No." Anakin took Tarkin's face gently in his gloved hand. "That is not what this is about. You do not wish for death because you think you enabled me. You wish for it because you wish to control what you fear. You wish to endure your death bravely, the same way you endure when you take pain for me. But there is nothing to endure. You are not going to _die._ "

Tarkin's expression was uncertain, his eyes moving back and forth as he tried to find Vader's face in the darkness. He was listening, at least. That was better than the alternative.

"Let me prove it to you," said Anakin, leaning in. "Surrender to me, and I will _show_ you it is true."

Tarkin had never been particularly demonstrative, but his face was ever so slightly more expressive when he thought no one could see him. At the word _surrender,_ his thin lips parted, more fearfully entranced than ever. Anakin could feel the desire coiled and hungry in him. "How will you do that?"

Anakin reached out with the Force and pushed him slowly, inexorably onto his back.  "If you are surrendering, you need not know."

Tarkin gave him a wary look, but he didn't resist. It was so easy to do this, to fall back into the physical rhythms they knew.  There was so much pent up energy here already. They'd both been so afraid of losing each other, all of yesterday and all the long fraught night. It was easy now for Anakin to mirror the desires of a man who loved him; who looked up at him like this, fearing and craving him, feeling guilty for his craving. Reaching for it anyway.

Tarkin could not order him to do something he found reprehensible, not the way he had last night, because this time Tarkin was surrendering. He would let Anakin do as Anakin willed.

And that was exactly Anakin's plan. If this malady of Tarkin's was something simple, only a confused fantasy born of the remnants of stress and desire, then Anakin would sate his desire and relieve his stress and it would all be fine. Tarkin would give himself up to Anakin's bestial whims not quite trusting what they were, but he would find only intimate gentleness this morning, not death. Perhaps that would be enough. Perhaps it would chase away his fears.

Anakin gently began to focus further in on Tarkin's body. He let it be a slower process than normal, little caresses that took their time exploring the skin, strokes that lingered on the chest and in the palms of the hands.

"It is all in my hands," said Anakin. "I will decide what I do to you. Nothing will stop me."

Tarkin let out a small breath, tense with anticipation. "Yes."

His Force-touch reached Tarkin's hips, his thighs, swirling around and between them. He could feel how aroused Tarkin was, under those blankets. How strong his wanting really was. Anakin let himself tease him for a minute or so, and then finally he reached in the Force for Tarkin's erection and stroked it slowly, savoring how that felt. Tarkin let out a low, shuddering, broken sound.

"You are mine," Anakin murmured. "Mine to do with exactly as I will, my toy. But I will not harm you. Because _I_ do not wish to. It is not my will."

He gently pushed a Force tendril inside him, in rhythm with the slow soft pressure at his cock. They'd had sex like this before, not vanilla exactly but stripped-down and simple, no pain or elaborate games. Just them and their craving for each other. That was what Anakin's instincts told him he needed now.

"Feel me in you," he instructed, as if Tarkin had any choice in the matter. "This is what I want from you. Near me, loving me, needing me, alive. And I will _have_ what I want. Do you understand?"

Tarkin shook his head slightly, hanging on to some wisp of his former stubbornness. "Of course that's what you think you want." Tarkin was sure he would be harmed, sooner or later. Anakin's insistence otherwise was cute to him and sad, as misguided as a child at naptime insisting it wasn't tired.

Anakin only narrowly stopped himself from arguing back. He couldn't get distracted into an argument now; he had to focus. If this was going to work, it had to work on the level of instincts, feelings, not the kinds of rational discussion that they'd already tried and failed at.

He concentrated a moment and refocused, feeling Tarkin's pleasure and need as he always did. Those things were real, and he wanted more of them.

He put out a gloved hand and caressed Tarkin's body while he worked at him with the Force, shoulder to chest, chest to belly. Tarkin's abdomen wasn't normally much of an erogenous zone, but when Anakin's hand roved that low, Tarkin gasped slightly, shuddered. Vader could feel the pulse of emotion that came with this, a burst of extra fear and lust from somewhere deep in Tarkin's mind, not the nerves but some mental image or memory that had been briefly called up. It felt good.

"It is what I _do_ want," Anakin growled, "and I will _have_ it. I will _make_ you understand."

Tarkin huffed out a strange kind of breath, halfway to laughter. He believed him, which was the strange thing. He believed Anakin could do that to him, whether he willed it or not, and that didn't make him any less afraid.

But he still wanted Anakin through his fear. He wanted him _more_ through his fear, twisted as he was, and his body was responding so very quickly and strongly, already approaching its peak. It was so easy to follow that rush of desire where it led. Anakin tightened his grip on Tarkin's cock just a little. He watched the quick, shallow breaths Tarkin took, his eyes half-lidded, his lips forming incoherent unvoiced syllables. Then all at once he was coming, a sharp hot rush, arching his back against the bedspread. He let out his breath afterwards, a long deep sigh, as he sagged into motionlessness.

It was a release for Vader, too, of course; it didn't involve his body, but he felt it in his bones. He felt better. He felt as though he could relax.

But he hadn't solved the problem. He could feel that, too, before either of them said anything. Even in the afterglow, eyes closed with bliss, Tarkin still feared for his life in the particular way that he had all morning. A single object lesson hadn't put that to rest.

Anakin had wanted to reassure Tarkin, to show him there was nothing to fear. But from Tarkin's point of view, this was no reassurance at all. Anakin was going to kill him; he remained stubbornly convinced of that in the face of all reason. Anything prior to that, any attempt to treat him well and gently, was only a prolonging of the inevitable. A predator doling out false hope to toy with its prey.

"You are mine," Anakin insisted, not knowing what else to say.

"Evidently." Tarkin's eyes fluttered most of the way back open. He rolled over and groped for his beside table, looking for a tissue. Anakin took pity on him and floated one into his hand, and he cleaned himself briskly.

"Do you feel... any better?" Anakin asked.

Tarkin made a diffident gesture, tossing his tissue into the bedside waste bin. "A little, in a sense. I don't think this is the sort of thing you can fix with a bit of cathartic sex. I don't think you can fix this at all." He paused, curling slightly in on himself as he drew the covers back over his torso. Anakin had never seen him like this, dejected and not bothering to hide it - normally Tarkin did whatever it took to persevere. "I think I want to go back to sleep, actually."

"I _will_ fix this," Anakin vowed. "I will find a way." The alternative was unthinkable: he didn't want to lose Tarkin. He'd already lost so many people, through his own foolishness, that he would never get back. If he had to do it again, he might as well put his lightsaber through his chest.

But Tarkin didn't bother to answer. He only leaned back into his own pillow and closed his eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well that was depressing but I had no impulse control and couldn't stop myself from staying up to post it :D
> 
> This fic might be a little slower to update than the other one, for a number of reasons, but in the meantime someone on Tumblr got me to start up a Vadarkin Discord server so if you want in on that, lmk.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tarkin's chief of staff is starting to worry about him. Anakin is worried about a lot of other things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I honestly have no idea how to even write content warnings for this story, but Tarkin's general vibe of "what if sexy things happened that killed me" is gonna continue for a while.

Tarkin woke up again at his usual time, feeling only marginally better rested. He had a feeling he'd dreamed some more, but he didn't remember for sure. As he rolled over and shut the alarm off, he briefly wondered if his encounter with Anakin a few hours earlier had been a dream, too. It had been too dark to see anything; it felt a bit surreal.

He was fairly sure it had really happened, though. Given the situation, and the way he and Anakin typically argued and had sex, it all had the mundane texture of something real. Besides, he discovered as he switched on the lights, he'd missed a spot cleaning himself.

He showered in the Imperial Suite's big marble fresher, and he cornered a serving droid and demanded caf, and then he slipped on his bathrobe and went to his office to frown at his schedule.

It was a travesty, of course. He'd missed literally all his obligations yesterday. In addition to the things that had to be rescheduled, there were also several dozen new requests for the Emperor's attention - people in every department that the Empire supported, who'd just heard of this truce with the Rebel Alliance and demanded to know what was going on and what it meant for them. Some of them could be put off for a while, or they were unimportant enough that he could send a representative to deal with them. Still, even prioritized and delegated, this was a mess.

As he worked tiredly on moving things around into a semblance of order, he reflected that, in one way, it could have been worse. Anakin was still _letting_ him set his own schedule. In a slightly worse version of reality, he might have woken up today and rolled out of bed and found his schedule completely blank. All items removed. All communications disabled. All files erased. The door to the Imperial Suite locked from the outside, even. If Anakin had wanted to depose Tarkin completely, who could stop him? Not Tarkin.

Tarkin could have been kept prisoner in his own Imperial chambers, removed from power as swiftly as with an executioner's blade, kept caged and alive for no greater purpose than for Anakin to visit and have his way with sometimes, in between dismantling everything valuable they'd ever built together. Until Anakin tired of that, too, and destroyed him as a gesture of good will to his new Rebel friends.

It was a great relief that none of that had happened, and that Tarkin's exhausted mind was instead struggling to focus on how to hold meetings today. It wouldn't matter in the end, the Empire was going to fall apart anyway, but things would be marginally better in the meantime for him having organized things properly. It was a good thing he could do it.

Clearly.

*

"My lord," said Alba Nemeus, after the third or fourth of those meetings had finished - this one with the Joint Chiefs, who had all ended up filing out of the room with disgruntled looks on their lined faces, accepting Tarkin's explanations only because he was the Emperor and they didn't really have another option. Stage a coup? They could try. Anakin would have a thing or two to say about it.

"Yes?" said Tarkin, looking him up and down. They were in one of the palace's black, shiny meeting rooms. There was a big black desk where everyone had been sitting until a moment ago. Nemeus was a man only slightly younger than Tarkin, with slightly better musculature and a fuller, whiter head of hair. He was Tarkin's chief of staff. They'd been working together for a long time. At the moment, he was standing at military ease, his hands clasped behind him with a tightness Tarkin recognized as a sign of nerves, though Nemeus controlled such things well.

"I was wondering if you were feeling all right, my lord."

Tarkin looked back at him. He understood Nemeus' nervousness; this was the sort of question Tarkin loathed to be asked. "As well as can be expected. Was that all?"

Nemeus raised his eyebrows slightly. "We've worked together a long time, my lord. Under stress, if there's no immediate target on which to take out your feelings, you become prone to little fits of staring into space, lost in thought. This morning you're having them much more severely than normal. Obviously this situation is... irregular, and undesirable. I'd like to make sure we're not about to make it worse. And I suppose I'd like to make sure I correctly understand the problem."

"You understand it well enough. There's really nothing that can be done, unless you want to run interference and postpone some of today's meetings even longer."

"Of course, my lord." Nemeus hesitated long enough that Tarkin was almost ready to push past him and leave, before he ventured in a more hushed voice, "Wilhuff... I'm sorry to ask. But has Emperor Vader harmed you in any way? I don't mean within a consensual encounter, I mean... in some undesired way."

Tarkin was slightly taken aback. He had told Nemeus, along with the rest of the Ruling Council yesterday, that they couldn't stray from the terms of a fair truce. Because Emperor Vader would see personally to anyone who tried. He hadn't fully considered what impression that would give, to the rest of the assembled men, as to the relationship between the two Emperors.

 _In some undesired way._ He permitted himself a tiny, ironic smile. He'd been lustfully dreaming of letting Anakin kill him. If he _had_ been harmed, could he really have called it undesired?

"No," he said. "That's not what this is. But tell me, Nemeus, what in the galaxy could you have done for me if I'd said 'yes'? Nothing. So I suggest you not ask questions to which you don't want an answer."

*

The meetings went as well as they could have. Tarkin said what he needed to say. He kept the Empire functioning as Imperially as it could, where it could. But it wasn't going to last, and his heart wasn't in it.

His heart was with Anakin, out in that jungle from his dream.

When the meetings became repetitive, that was where his mind wandered to. Anakin, a jungle creature, slicing through muscle and shattering bone with his mechanical jaws.

Anakin, strapping Tarkin in to some torture machine, tearing into his mind and rearranging things until they politically agreed. That was one of the things he'd said last night which had stuck in Tarkin's memory. _I will make you understand._ If anyone could do that, Anakin could. What would it be like to believe all the things Anakin currently believed, that all the Rebels were his children, that an entire insurrection movement was somehow family now and not a threat? It would be as though Tarkin had vanished, and an entirely different person created in his stead.

Maybe Anakin would like that person better. Maybe he could keep that person like a pet, sealing him in his rooms, dressing and feeding him according to his own whims, knowing he would work tirelessly at nothing but Anakin's whims.

He imagined Anakin, forcing him to kneel publicly on the palace's steps, in cuffs, in chains, and renounce everything he believed in. To swear to the world that the only order now was Anakin's order. Then beating and fucking and killing him anyway, right there in the whole Empire's view, making him _beg_ for his death, just to drive the point home.

After a while, he lost track of which meeting was which.

*

But in the evening after dinner there was a blessedly blank space, labeled with nothing but the word _Anakin._

It was almost an anticlimax when Tarkin walked into the Imperial bedroom. Anakin obediently awaited him there, sitting on the edge of the bed in his suit and cape and helmet. There was no immediate threat, no aggression, and therefore nothing Tarkin could ecstatically surrender himself to, not just yet.

Irrationally, that annoyed him.

Anakin's head turned, tracking him as he entered. The lights in the bedroom, at least, were on this time. Everything was a reassuring, clean, modernist gray.

"You are well?" said Anakin, in a tone that made it clear he knew he wasn't.

"As well as I can be," said Tarkin, sitting a short distance from him. "Yourself?"

"I am... concerned for you. Your mind has been loud. Continually."

"Yes, and you said you would fix that, didn't you?"

"Help me understand," said Anakin. "I told you I saw the essence of your thoughts, but not the details. When you imagine me harming you - what do you imagine? What were you dreaming of, last night?"

Tarkin took a breath and let it back out. He wanted this and he didn't want it. He wanted Anakin to creep inside these fantasies with him, to understand them. He also knew that, even if he told Anakin everything, that probably was not the likely outcome. Anakin would only blather at him about why his feelings were wrong. In that case, he wanted to tell Anakin to fuck off and leave him alone.

"I dreamed I was out in the jungle," said Tarkin, "and you were some great predatory beast. You ate me up. I let you."

Anakin turned his head slowly, seeming to chew on that image. "You died. In the dream."

"I'm not sure if it got quite to that point before I woke up. I was certainly dying."

"And the other fantasies you have had today. Do you die in them?"

Tarkin worked his jaw and looked down at the gray bedspread. "Some of them."

"So you do not only fear that. You fantasize about it, again and again. Do you understand why that distresses me, when I can feel your thoughts?" said Anakin. "Why it is a _limit,_ as you would put it, for me to act that out with you? I thought that you must, but now I am not sure."

"I don't understand anything about you anymore."

"Do you _wish_ to die?"

Tarkin bit the inside of his mouth, thinking of what that phrase would mean to Anakin. So very recently, even the day before he found Luke, Anakin had been having the kinds of crises where he wanted to end his life. But Tarkin wasn't feeling the way Anakin had. He didn't think he deserved to die. He didn't think life, in itself, was a terrible burden that ought to be put down. The idea of jumping off some ledge or taking some kind of poison, or any other solitary self-inflicted end, didn't appeal to him. It was just that he had these terribly arousing thoughts that wouldn't leave him. Thoughts of, yes, death, or of having his selfhood erased in some other way. Thoughts, without exception, involving Anakin.

"You do not know," said Anakin, watching him carefully.

"It's pointless to discuss this."

"You do not know, and you do not want to tell me, but I cannot help but see it, and it is about _me,_ and it will not _stop._ " Anakin loomed a step closer, his shadow falling over the bed. "I will cure you of this."

"Then cure me." Tarkin leaned in, nothing but challenge in his gaze. "Make me want to deal with you like a civilized being again. Use your own strength, if you want that so badly."

In response, Anakin pushed him down onto the bed.

Tarkin grinned slightly as his body responded. The rush of his own pulse, the catch of his breath, the beginnings of heat between his legs. The weight of Anakin, even if it was just a Force-touch, holding him firm and impatiently settling into his skin. Roving along him from the collarbones down. He'd gotten off this morning, but it hadn't really satisfied him - too simple, too gentle, none of the fear and pain and helplessness he craved. This felt more like Anakin's usual self. This felt like what he needed.

"Is this what you want?" said Anakin.

Tarkin smiled fiercely. "Some of it."

"Gentleness did nothing to cure you," said Anakin. His Force-touch had already almost completed its first hasty survey of Tarkin's nerves, sliding over the skin between his legs under his clothing, licking at his toes. "So I will be harsh, as we are accustomed. Do you want that?"

"When do I not?"

Pain cracked, harshly and all at once, through his body.

It was like being electrocuted; it was like some great claw tearing all the way through him. It rushed all the way up, heels to skull, and he cried out and arched. Even the way Anakin held him down couldn't stop his spine from contorting, his head from tilting back in an awful grimace, his muscles beginning to spasm. This was much more than the amount he liked - especially so soon in the scene. There was no pleasure in it. It was only hot because, right now, in his fevered state of mind, he _wanted_ Anakin to do things that he didn't like. Anakin should make him suffer - should break him - yes, that was right.

"This is what we will begin with," said Anakin, colder than ever. A professional interrogator's voice. "It can, of course, build from here. If you are not cooperative."

Tarkin bared his teeth as the pain briefly ebbed; he was sure it would come again in a moment. "Cooperative with what? You've yet to make any demands."

"You will find my demands are few. Nothing you would have any reason to object to, were you not in a... recalcitrant state." Anakin turned his forearm over lazily and closed his fist, and the same pain arced through Tarkin again, longer this time, cramping the muscles all the way down his spine as his limbs clenched and trembled. "Tell me what I ask you to tell me. Tell me aloud that you know I do not kill my lovers."

Tarkin hissed out a derisive breath. This wasn't what he'd wanted the scene to be about, but the pain just kept on. It was fairly clear to him that Anakin wouldn't unclench his fist, wouldn't let up, until Tarkin gave him what he wanted.

"You don't," he admitted sullenly. He could have kept resisting, even under torture, if he'd wanted to; but it wasn't any betrayal of Tarkin's principles to admit this, not anything his usual self wouldn't have admitted. "Not intentionally."

"Not _intentionally,_ " Anakin mocked. The pain did not change even a little, and Tarkin choked down a whimper. "Tell me you know _why_ I will not do that, even only as a game, even if you desperately want it."

Tarkin rolled his eyes. "Because you're still torn up about what happened to your ex-wife and you can't bear the thought of losing anyone ever again, yes, Anakin, I _know._ "

He expected Anakin to be displeased again, to keep the pain going, but instead it ebbed most of the way. It left a lingering soreness, like after hard exercise or a physical beating. There was still no room to move.

"Losing anyone I care for," Anakin corrected, his voice softer now. All at once there was a rustle, as Tarkin's stupidly elaborate Imperial robes started to come off, quickly and roughly, a layer at a time. "Anyone I _want._ "

Tarkin took a deep, gasping breath; he liked this part. Anakin had a short fuse, but he didn't think even Anakin would be done with the pain already. More of that was surely coming before they had their pleasure. Still, being undressed felt good. It felt very important that Anakin _should_ want this.

"Do you want me?" Anakin asked, low and teasing, taking a step closer. The last of the robes and underthings pulled themselves briskly away, so there was nothing between his bare, thin body and the air now. He wasn't hard yet, but he wanted to be, and he thought that if Anakin touched him with those gloves now, his body would react more strongly than normal, the nerves hypersensitized with alertness and pain.

"Yes," said Tarkin.

"You do," Anakin agreed, and then he waved his hand and sent another wave of pain through him, exactly as strong and night-unbearable as the first. "Tell me. Am I the only one who gives you these dreams?"

"I don't - know what - you mean," said Tarkin, gritting his teeth through it as his muscles clenched.

"You dream of _me_ eating you up. Why me? Have you dreamt that way of your other lovers? Of Grand Admiral Daala?"

But Tarkin did not want to think about Natasi now, even for a second.

He hadn't even said anything, but abruptly the pain stopped. The pressure holding him down released, all at once, the way it had last night, when he demanded that Anakin choke him. Tarkin sat up, shaken and blinking; he hadn't done anything amiss. Anakin must have felt something in his mind.

"Tarkin," said Anakin, soft and urgent, sounding even more shaken than Tarkin felt. He had been angry before; now he was truly disturbed. "What happened to Grand Admiral Daala? Where is she?"

"She's safe." Tarkin had been playing at having answers beaten out of him, but there was such genuine distress in Anakin's voice that now he answered without thinking. "I sent her away so she would be."

"From me," said Anakin, as shaken as before. "Safe from _me._ "

For Force's sake, Tarkin didn't want to talk about this. She had been angry when she left, her shoulders rigid as she walked away, refusing to look at him. She had asked him to go with her, to flee the coming Rebel depredations and find safety in exile together. She had told him he would die if he stayed. And still he had refused her.

"That is why I have not seen her," Anakin mused. "That is why she was not in your bed with you this morning. That is why I was the one you came to with your fantasies, even though you fear me. It is not only that you want me. You had no one else." His voice rose, agitated to the point of incoherence, and his gloved fists clenched and unclenched. "I did that to you. I made you lose the person you - no. I did not. I knew nothing about it. You did it yourself!"

"If I did it myself, then it's none of your business, is it?" Tarkin snapped. "Pull yourself together."

"There is something wrong with you," Anakin insisted, his voice broken and wild. "It is _you._ "

"Then shut up and hurt me again," said Tarkin, before he could think better of it. Anakin in a state like this was not safe to play with, but Tarkin didn't care. He'd rather be hurt than continue this conversation a second longer.

"Why?" said Anakin, turning his helmeted head irately, and then he closed his fist. Pain arced through Tarkin, even harder than before, and without any semblance of the Force keeping his body in place. He flopped down hard onto the mattress, on his back, his limbs contorting as they clenched and unclenched. "Because hurting is what I am _for?_ Because that is the only use you have for me? Is that why?"

Tarkin tried very hard to make his mouth work. This pain was rapidly nearing the range where it genuinely frightened him, where it started to feel like bones breaking and organs failing. Like it had in some of their very earliest experiments, when Anakin had not yet been taught to keep things within reasonable bounds. When his temper was always a risk.

Somehow, even now, he did not want to tell Anakin to stop.

"Don't - wallow, Anakin," he gritted out. "We've - discussed this before."

"That _is_ what this is," said Anakin, with a hysteria only barely contained. "Isn't it? The second I try to do something other than hurting, that is when you decide I am a threat to you."

"Oh?" Tarkin was far past done trying to solve this with words. Words wouldn't solve anything. Even now, in this level of pain, he just wanted Anakin to crash against him until one of them broke. "Then what are you going to _do_ about that?"

"Because," Anakin continued, as if he hadn't heard, and Tarkin gave a despairing groan. He was going to keep trying to solve it with words, after all. "When we are not both threats, in the same direction, a united front. When you yourself are made to be something other than a threat. That is when you feel unsafe. Isn't it?"

"What do you care?" Tarkin snarled.

"But I _know_ you." Anakin's voice had gone lower and deadlier than ever. "I have been in your mind. Who told you that you had to be a threat to survive? A liar did."

Tarkin clenched his teeth, feeling his limbs begin to shake in earnest. This was really _too_ much pain, but maybe too much pain was what they both deserved. "Anakin, I swear to you, this is _not_ going to be a fruitful line of inquiry-"

He felt something, a slight but rising pain in his skull, altogether different from the rest of the torment. He suddenly, and with the awful sinking certainty of a nightmare, knew what Anakin was going to do. This was the beginning of a mind probe - he had felt them before. He had dared Anakin to do it.

He knew what Anakin was referring to. They had been struggling with the aftermaths of Palpatine's lies ever since they wrested the galaxy from him. There had been so much that Palpatine had hidden even from the two of them, when it came to his plans for the Empire after his death, his reasons for creating an Empire in the first place. And Anakin had casually revealed another great lie, an older one, only yesterday while they were all still reeling about the truce.

Tarkin had told Anakin to _make_ him understand. But this was not what he had meant.

"I will _show_ you-" Anakin growled

"Tatooine," Tarkin blurted.

It was their safeword, though they almost never used it. The pain instantly withdrew, both the probe and the physical torment. Tarkin collapsed down on the bed, his limbs too weak to do much but twitch in the aftermath. He only vaguely noticed Anakin's head turning, looking his body up and down.

"You still have a limit, then," Anakin murmured. "A strange one. Are you so unwilling? You would rather I kill you than make you think of the truth."

Tarkin vaguely regained enough control of his hands to put them over his face in mute despair. A limit was a limit, but he didn't have the energy to argue this.

"Rest, then," said Anakin after a pause. "Think of nothing. I have... much to consider."

He swept out of the tidy gray room, his black cape billowing behind him, and Tarkin didn't even have the heart to order him to come back.


End file.
